LibreOffice will have roadmap for cloud service next month

The Document Foundation (TDF), which produces the leading open source office software suite LibreOffice, is on schedule for the release of its plan to offer a cloud version of its software next month.

The team released the last update to its 3.4 build on Thursday and is now focused on developing version 3.5 further, but the group is now also ready to detail its plans for cloud services in April. That said, the team reserves the right to hold off on launch until the last few software fixes come in, TDF spokesman Italo Vignoli told The Register.

“At the moment we are focusing more on this because of some of the opportunities that are arising, which we can’t disclose now,” he explained. “We will have the cloud version roadmap out in April.”

The final build of the 3.4 fork, version 3.4.6, fixes a possible security hole in XML handling, as well as tweaking the build with small refinements. Updates to version 3.5, which was released in February, are now well underway and the team is also looking to port the software to other platforms.

Vignoli said that LibreOffice for Android was well under way, with about 80 per cent of the porting complete and over half the coding left to do. The interface is the area that now needs most work done before release, and the iOS port will be released after the Android version.

TDF is also close to finalizing its certification process for developers and third-party consultants, so that enterprises looking to use the software can hire qualified people to ease integration. The quickest move towards this, however, is to get involved in the project, Vignoli said.

So far, TDF is getting a lot of support from the development community. Around 10 to 20 developers were joining the project every month, and the team has managed to get 12 builds out in the last 18 months. By comparison, the former top dog in the open source software field, OpenOffice, is still waiting to do a major update to its code base, although Apache is promising this soon.